#have you SEEN what kind of nasty freaky they get up to in the futuristic district

[spoonmoment119]

anyone who doesn't ship grumbo CLEARLY has never watched grian's season 6. he's insane. he'd do anything for mumbo.

[salt-and-vinegar-reviews]

The Sprawl: Part 3

Ok let's just get this over with. Part 1  Part 2

Chapter 3 opens with O'Malley in the hospital and-

WHY?

WHY ARE THE NURSE/DOCTOR UNIFORMS BONDAGE GEAR??? I know some stuff is weird cause ~future~ but oh my god. For fucks sake not only does that look uncomfortable to work in it's also probably highly unsanitary especially when you consider almost everyone has FUR. Just imagine one of them performing surgery on a patient and shedding their god damn fur into the open wound thanks to all the random patches of skin just open for no reason. Yeah let me just be on my feet all day tending to patients in fucking stilettos. Seriously, this isn't what you'd expect to see in a futuristic hospital, this is something straight out of a kink scene. Sterile and comfortable work uniforms? Nah, fuck that, lets just put them in straight up bondage gear. And of course it's just the girls.

Also why are some of them blindfolded? Are those supposed to be visors? How can they see when operating and tending to patients? Those visors are solid. If anything they look like it’ll hinder their work, not help it. Why are their gloves fingerless? That defeats the purpose of wearing medical gloves. I feel like I’m losing my mind.

Anyway, at least O’Malley went to the hospital instead of just wandering around wounded and pretending it’s all good. I mean he still leaves pretty quickly after waking up but whatever. Also looks like Sibo took his car so injured O’Malley has to get a cab back to his apartment. Dick move, Sibo. Why is that a dick move you ask? Well aside from the obvious she just goes back to his apartment anyway.

And also decides to take a shower while she’s there because we apparently haven’t filled our fanservice quota yet. Despite O’Malley’s apartment being literally above what is essentially a strip club. I wish I was joking. Anyway, after putting on some clothes Sibo explains that the reason she ditched O’Malley at the hospital was because she felt it wasn’t safe for them both to stay there. She also explains that the car just drove her back to the apartment cause self driving cars cause future but I still think it’s a dick move.

So they decide to get some rest and O’Malley has an ominous dream before waking up screaming. Also there’s just cops in his home now.

Sibo apparently ditched him again and the cops want answers about the shit that went down in chapter 2 because things don’t add up on their end. So O’Malley is pissed cause the cops don’t believe him and suspect him as having done something to the now missing Sibo. He goes around asking people about, presumably, Sibo for a bit before getting dragged into some kind of swat vehicle, beat up, then just dumped out in the rain somewhere else with his previous wound now reopened. And right when it looked like things couldn’t be bad enough there’s an explosion and-

Yeah that was all just a dream too. So O’Malley wakes up for real this time and turns on the news to see reports of a totally relevant explosion having happened in another area of the city before he goes and checks in on Sibo. And yup, she’s missing so he runs off to try and find her only to get hung up by a crime scene investigation downstairs at the strip club.

O’Malley runs to the garage complex to his car and is greeted by some freaky shit (including someone holding up Sibo’s severed head) which made me think all this was once again just ANOTHER dream but no, he comes back to reality in his car so I guess just the freaky shit in the garage was a hallucination I don’t even know anymore it feels like inception up in here. So O’Malley is losing his mind and who should call him in that moment but non other than Sibo asking for his help and talking about the danger orb and the ARnet. Naturally O’Malley rushes off to go save her and when he gets there he’s greeted by more carnage.

A cop that’s somehow still clinging to life fills O’Malley in a little on what happened and O’Malley goes down to the rail station and hops on a train. The following train scene I gotta say is really good. In contrast to O’Malley’s earlier inner monologues there’s absolutely no dialog or exposition or anything in this scene and I feel like it’s better for it. It lets just the visuals do the talking and it’s really solid.

After jumping off the train O’Malley comes across the cultists again, this time with the danger orb, and this is where the comic kicks it back up to 11 because this next scene is actually pretty intense and hey i gotta give credit where it’s due.

So O’Malley tries to fight off the cultists and free Sibo but the cultist summon some kind of nasty creature through Sibo and alas our poor new protagonist is overwhelmed and left to be found the same way he found that cop.

And here's where I have to take a moment to retract something I said in part 2 of this review. See, at the time of writing part 2, chapter 3 of the comic wasn't finished. Anyway, when I said golden boy Getta was gone for good I was wrong. Because here he fucking is. Back for more at the end of this chapter.

I don’t know how to feel about his appearance anymore because he was shown to know more than he let on but he just left so abruptly. I mean this could also be someone else but come on, who else would it be but the golden boy?

And because I took so damn long to write part 3 I’m just gonna quickly sum up what’s happened in chapter 4 so far. Basically shit’s going to hell in a hand-basket and there’s robots now. The robot designs look really cool. Oh and our friend the hour counter makes another appearance and I don’t care enough to do the math this time.

In conclusion:

The fetishy bullshit isn't doing the comic any favors. Or, well, considering how popular porn is on the internet maybe it is, but it certainly isn't doing the STORY any favors. I think this is honestly the most disappointing thing about the sprawl. I actually like some of the male characters designs and clothing but most if not all the designs for the female characters so far are questionable at best. Seriously the main concern for the design of the women in this comic is obviously for sex appeal and it’s distracting in a bad way. 

The coloring and shading is actually generally really well done. It sets the tone really well and different places have different lighting, it’s good. It's just a shame the lines and anatomy are so shoddy. It does get better as it goes but it still feels like the weak link, especially the facial anatomy. Honestly the backgrounds are the better parts of the art. Which seems a little backwards. Generally speaking most comic artists I've seen start with drawing characters and the like, and usually don't do backgrounds as much until they start actually making the comic pages (even then they leave out backgrounds many times in the panels). This, however, really goes out of its way to show just where the characters are at any given moment, and while what's happening isn't always clear, the backgrounds are almost always there. I have to give it credit. Aside from some perspective weirdness here and there the backgrounds are really good.

The more I think about it the more I feel a vast majority of chapter one could have been skipped entirely and the small important bits turned into a prologue. The story could have started with chapter 2 and almost nothing would change. It could have easily just started with Getta packing up the orb surrounded by corpses. That would have been WAY MORE EFFECTIVE than the endless bullshit that comes up long before anything actually interesting happens. Because with that RIGHT AWAY you would get mystery, arguably one of the most effective hooks any creative work can have.  What happened here? Who are those people? Who is this guy? What's that orb? BOOM. Instant intrigue. A lot of this is more confusing than mysterious. Now don’t take that as me wanting everything explained. I get it’s supposed to be a mystery and we’re supposed to question things and have stuff slowly revealed over time but that’s not really what happens here. Yes things get revealed but there’s not enough established before those reveals for it to hold too much meaning to the readers. There are parts of this that are genuinely good and I would enjoy if it weren't for the parts that take me out of it so fast I get whiplash.

I wanted to like this, by all rights I should have liked this comic, it has many elements I’m a fan of. This story could EASILY be fascinating and mysterious and terrifying, it's just a shame those elements have to share the spotlight with heavy handed tropes, pacing problems, nonsensical leaps of logic, and tits. In the end a lot of it just left me like

I hope it gets better honestly. Shit’s really going down now so who knows. But damn those first two and a half chapters were rough.

There, I’m done, I’m free.

-Raccoon